I built the Protoshield fully but when I connect it to the Arduino, everything shuts off. Any help?
-A
Visual inspection of the board might help. There may be some unintended "bridge" somewhere .
Looked it over, all connections are solid and there are no bridges.
-A
Which Protoshield is it?
Maybe attach some high res. photos for us to see.
You are not giving us very much to work with.
Adafruit Prototype shield, I hope the pictures will help.
Please excuse the quality of the images, My camera isn't very good. :-/
There ya go:
Those are no good - small, out of focus, oblique vantage points. Get a camera with a macro function, and take pictures from straight overhead (and high-res).
Okay, I'll see what I can do,
Okay, I'll see what I can do,
If you have a scanner, you might try placing the board on that and get an image that way; although the depth of field of the scanner may not be enough with the pins/headers in the way - but it might be worth a shot.
If your camera doesn't have a macro lens, but does have an LCD viewfinder, you can sometimes get OK quality "macro" shots by shooting through a magnifying lens. I used to do that with my old Kodak DC3200, using the magnifying lens of an articulated arm desk lamp I have (great for inspecting circuit boards, BTW - what with the built-in light and such). You might also be able to do the same with a small magnifying lens attached with a section of cardboard tube to your lens on the camera (takes some experimentation) - there are a few pages out there detailing how to do such a homemade macro lens.
Most importantly, though, is that the images need to be directly in-line with the board, both the front and back, ideally with even lighting with as few shadows as possible (for better cameras there are ring-flash illuminators that fit around the lens, just for the purpose of macro photography). This is difficult to do, but generally can be done OK using two or three diffuse lighting sources aimed at the board at an angle, then shooting the picture downward between the lights.
Good luck.
You could also start with a multimeter - measure from the VCC pins to ground, see if there a short somewhere. Maybe the reset switch is on all the time? Basic things like that.